


and in the morning we will remember

by somehowunbroken



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Ladystuck, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-09
Updated: 2012-11-09
Packaged: 2017-11-18 07:06:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose knows that she's running out of time, and she's still not sure what to say to her child. [Rated Mature for Dave's mouth and canon-predicated angst about Rose and Dave fighting the Condesce.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	and in the morning we will remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [watchfob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/watchfob/gifts).



> This was written for Ladystuck 2012. The prompt I used was: Alpha Rose Lalonde. The night before facing the Condesce. What was going on her mind? Did she have any qualms, regrets, hopes for afterward? I love introspection and character analysis. A bit of worldbuilding would be really awesome, too!
> 
> I... definitely didn't get all of that in there, and for that, I apologize. My mind settled on that first part and refused to move on from there. I hope that you enjoy it anyway, watchfob!
> 
> Thanks to ariadne83 for her help and beta work, and for encouraging me to sign up in the first place, and to shinysylver, who has no idea what Homestuck is, but helped with encouragement on this anyway.

TT: Reports of what happened to our ancestors after that are sketchy.  
TT: There were no eye witness accounts I've found, but some believe they regrouped and confronted the Condesce herself. 

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and tomorrow, you are going to die.

It’s okay, really. Life has been more a farce than anything else for quite a while, and with any amount of luck, your death will mark a change. You’ve earned your place in history already, but as things stand, nobody will know that it was you who took out the High Chaplain of Interstellar War. If you succeed tomorrow, there’s a chance that people will be able to learn things like that again – that things will go back to the way they were before Her Imperious Condescension and the Hilarocaust and everything else that has spilled down in the past few years. It’s not that you’re desperate for the attention, it’s that you’re desperate for your future.

Dave has, of course, recorded as much as he’s been able to. His movies are brilliantly executed, committing to film a lot of things that go over the heads of the viewers and, more importantly, the review board and the restrictions that have been placed upon media. You’ve had several conversations with him about it; you always argue that it’s no use to record things that will never be understood, while he smirks and tosses _Complacency of the Learned_ back in your face. You point out that the message has reached those whom it was meant to reach, and he shoots back that he’s done the same.

Neither of you brings up the reality of the situation. You’re both just trying to leave a map for the future, a way for the children you know you’ll someday have to figure things out, even if the world continues to descend into hell. They’ll be _your_ children. They’ll be more than smart enough to figure out the clues you’ve left.

It was your idea to prepare places for those children. Dave had raised an eyebrow, but you’re prone to knowing things that he isn’t privy to; he has mostly come to trust your instincts over the years, and you know that he badly wants to make things as easy for his progeny as you do for yours. You’re able to block certain things from the Condesce, and you’ve made use of this over the years. It will take a lot of your energy to keep the homes you’ve set up safe, but it will be worth it when your children have a place to live, food to eat, things to learn that haven’t been tainted by baked goods and murderous clowns.

Your mind wanders as you think of the home you’ve made for your child. Will he or she like it? Will the child be safe there? Will he or she be able to grasp, to understand what you’ve left for him or her?

Will your child be able to survive?

There are some things that even your vision doesn’t grant you, and knowledge of your child is one of those things. The same goes for Dave’s child; when you close your eyes and search, pushing out and out into the Furthest Ring with your mind, you get nothing but blankness back. It doesn’t stop you from wondering.

You’re writing your child a letter. Well, that’s not entirely accurate; you’ve written several letters, stacks upon stacks of them, but it’s difficult to decide what to put into a letter that will be the only thing you ever say to your child. Between you and Dave, you have always been the more verbose, yet you’re the one struggling for words in this. Dave’s child will know his face, his voice; yours will have your letter. It’s all you can bear to leave.

“Don’t tell me you’re still writing. Shit, you have got to be kidding me, Lalonde.”

You glance up and smile at Dave. He’s leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, looking like he has nothing more serious on his mind than what to eat for dinner. His tone of voice gives him away more than anything, though; that sort of rebuke should be delivered with a practiced note of scornful disbelief, but he just sounds tired. He’s just as aware of what you’ll be facing in the morning as you are.

“I’m sorry, did we have plans?” you reply, setting your pen down on your desk. You don’t have a lot of time left, but you’ve written this letter so many times already. You’re not wondering what to write, but how to write it. You can spare some time for the man you consider a brother.

Dave shrugs. “Just thought it’d be a chill plan to get some sleep tonight, you know? Big day tomorrow, and you know I fucking hate going into shit with bags under my eyes.”

You shake your head, faint smile fixed in place on your face. You’re both acting like nothing is off, as if perhaps when morning comes, you’ll have nothing more strenuous than a meeting with his agent, or maybe yours. Dave raises an eyebrow, and you give as dainty a laugh as you can dredge up. “If you’re concerned about your beauty sleep, Dave, then please don’t let me keep you up.”

“Fuck, you know I can’t sleep without you snoring next to me.” Dave lets his arms drop to his sides. “It’s like music to my ears. _The Symphony of a Snore._ We could record that shit and sell it. Quickest album to ever reach multi-platinum.”

You nod, tilting your head to the side as if considering the option. “I’ll require sixty percent of the profits, and I reserve the right to opt out of the remix you’re sure to make.”

“Remixes are the shit,” he objects, but his mouth is twitching in his imitation of a smile, here-again-gone-again as it is. “How many letters have you written? Poor kid’s already going to have to read your fucking dead weight of a book. How much more shit are you going to saddle them with?”

You raise an eyebrow. “And how many videos have you left for your descendant?”

He waves a hand and walks over to slump onto the sofa. “Whatever.”

“I see,” you nod, picking your pen back up. “I’ll be a bit, Dave. You should rest.”

“I’ll wait,” he says, crossing his arms again and leaning his head against the back of the sofa. “As long as you can keep writing your shit with me staring at you, I’m good right here.”

You’ve been on the run together for months now, the two of you dodging the Condesce’s minions at every turn. You’ve slept in quarters both cramped and spacious, but neither of you can manage to sleep well unless you’re pressed to the other. When the world is out to get you, it’s a bit easier to breathe when your support system is beneath your fingertips. You would have been surprised if Dave had chosen to leave now.

“I’ll manage,” you say after a moment, scanning what you’ve written. It’s not bad – nothing you write is bad – but it’s not right, either. You sigh and reach for a new piece of paper. You write a salutation and pause, staring at the blank page before you.

“The last vid I made is a bitch,” Dave says quietly, and you turn to look at him again. His omnipresent sunglasses are folded in one hand, and his eyes are closed. “Kid’s going to bawl like an infant. I pulled exactly none of the punches. I feel like an asshole, tearing things up for this kid I’m never gonna meet.”

“Parental instincts are indeed difficult,” you say, somewhat less dryly than you intended to. There’s more than a grain of truth in your words.

Dave opens his eyes and meets your gaze. “I cried, Rose. In the vid. I was talking to him, shit, and I just fucking broke down.”

You set your pen down again. “Did you record over it?”

“No.” He doesn’t look away, and you can’t bring yourself to, either. “I was saying goodbye, telling him in the least gruesome way possible not to look me up, because all he’ll find are pieces.”

“Dave,” you start, but you have no idea what you’re supposed to say to that. You’ve studied psychology, response and evaluation, subtext and the unconscious mind, but you have nothing left on which you can draw. He smiles, honestly smiles, and jerks his head to the side. You stand and walk to the sofa, sitting beside him and resting your head on his shoulder. He puts his head on yours, and you sit together, neither of you saying a word for a long time.

“We aren’t going to make it out of this,” you say at some point. The sun has long since gone down; it’s probably closer to coming up at this point. “This isn’t a fight we can win.”

“Nope,” Dave agrees. “We’re gonna get slaughtered.”

“For the greater good,” you say, and Dave snorts but doesn’t respond.

Neither of you sleeps. You let your mind wander, closing your eyes and reaching to the future, poring through the ink in your mind for a sliver, a shard that shows your child. Dave is convinced that his will be a boy; with no evidence to the contrary, you can’t refute the idea. You’ve done your best to imagine both, or not to imagine anything at all; you don’t need to define your child to try to relate to them.

That doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be nice to know.

Dave sighs when the sun appears through the window, shifting beside you. “Well, that was a shitty final sleep.”

You pat his arm and knock his head with your own until he lifts it. You stretch and rise from the couch. “We’ll have an excellent last breakfast to make up for it.”

He snorts. “Not if you’re cooking,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “I fucking hate oatmeal, Rose. I don’t care how much energy it’s supposed to give me. It tastes like glue and piss had a godawful child, which then had some sort of hellish offspring with the child of leather and apples.”

It’s so utterly Dave that you smile. “If there’s one thing she can’t take from us, it’s us,” you say before you can think about stopping yourself. Dave blinks up at you for a moment before shaking his head.

“Your way with words is just fucking incredible,” he mutters, standing and twisting viciously. His spine cracks, and he grins as you grimace. “I’m making bacon,” he announces, heading for the kitchen. “Write your letter, Lalonde. We’re on a fucking timetable here.”

You sit at your desk again as he leaves the room. The page stares back at you as you run your finger absently up the side of your pen. You set the pen to the page, closing your eyes and looking just once more, expecting nothing-

_murky pink, a blonde head, a tittering laugh_

_a static noise in a sea of silence_

-and finding everything.

You hate being stereotypical in any way, but you nearly choke on the lump in your throat as you glimpse your daughter, your beautiful, perfect, lovely daughter. She fades from your mind as instantly as she had appeared, and you turn your attention to Dave’s child before this break in the Veil fades.

_small and whipcord thin, bright eyes, a low voice_

_a heart too big for a body_

A son. Dave had been right all along, and you wonder if it would be crueler to tell him or to keep the certainty of what he’s losing from him.

You open your eyes as Dave’s son fades from your mind’s eye, taking a moment to orient yourself in the here and now as you always do after using your other sight. Your gaze drifts around the room, noting the sofa, the curtains, the fall of light on the carpet. You finally look down at your desk, where your hand still sits poised above the paper, addressed _Dear child_.

You pull a new piece of paper from the stack on the edge of your desk and begin to write for the last time. It doesn’t take long, and you read it back only a few minutes later, nodding to yourself as you slip the paper into the front of your daughter’s copy of _Complacency of the Learned_ and rise. It smells like your breakfast is almost finished, and you’re done preparing for the rest of your life.

_Years in the future, but not many…_

Your name is Roxy Lalonde, and something tells you it’s time to read the letter. You’ve read the book, every last confusing, illuminating word of it, but you’ve always held back on the letter. Today, though, today’s the day.

The paper isn’t fragile. You’re not sure how your mom managed that – it’s old enough that it should have crumbled into dust probably twice by now. Dirk seems to think it’s some sort of side effect of the protections that your mom kept up on your respective places. You have no proof that it isn’t, so you guess you’re going with the magic theory.

You smooth the letter out on your desk and read your mother’s message to you.

_Dear daughter,_

_I’ve done my best to prepare you for what you’ll face in your life. I’m sorry for many, many things, but mostly that I won’t be there to apologize to you in person for not being able to do more._

_History will do its best to forget what I’ve done. The details aren’t important at this point; if you’ve read my book, then you already know what we’re faced with. Suffice it to say that I have been fighting, and that I’m certain that the fight I’m heading to now will be my last._

_I would have liked to meet you. I probably wouldn’t have made a very good mother, but I would have liked that chance. Instead, we’re separated by generations, mother and daughter destined never to meet. I’m most sorry for that, I think._

_I’d tell you to stay safe, to be strong, but if you’re reading this, then you’ve grown enough to understand the necessity of those things on your own. Instead I’ll wish you the best of luck, and tell you to give Strider’s son the kind of hell that only a true Lalonde woman can._

_Your mother, Rose_

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is from Laurence Binyon's well-known poem _For The Fallen:_
> 
> With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,  
>  England mourns for her dead across the sea.  
> Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,  
> Fallen in the cause of the free.
> 
> Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal  
> Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,  
> There is music in the midst of desolation  
> And a glory that shines upon our tears.
> 
> They went with songs to the battle, they were young,  
> Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.  
> They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;  
> They fell with their faces to the foe.
> 
> They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:  
> Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.  
> At the going down of the sun and in the morning  
> We will remember them.
> 
> They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;  
> They sit no more at familiar tables of home;  
> They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;  
> They sleep beyond England's foam.
> 
> But where our desires are and our hopes profound,  
> Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,  
> To the innermost heart of their own land they are known  
> As the stars are known to the Night;
> 
> As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,  
> Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;  
> As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,  
> To the end, to the end, they remain.


End file.
